We had also manifold proofs of their power to arrest utterance before persons unfit to be entrusted with the mysteries. The first instance occurred to myself, and was in this wise. I was reading some passages in illustration of our work to an old clerical friend who came to see me in Paris, when I inadvertently turned to a part of the book which we had been charged to keep secret. But before I had read a line, the air round me became so dense with invisible presences that I was unable to see, and my heart was clutched, as if by an invisible hand, and lifted up towards my throat with such force as almost to choke me; while, at the same instant, an overwhelming sense of my fault was impressed on my mind, causing me for some hours to feel as one utterly God-forsaken and cast off. Not thinking that "Mary" was liable to err in the same way, or caring to tell her of my trespass, I kept silence respecting this experience. But a few weeks later it was repeated for her. She was speaking of our work to a spiritualist friend with whom we were spending the evening, and, in her eagerness, got upon topics which I recognised as forbidden. But before I had time to remind her, she suddenly stopped short and rose from her seat, gasping and dazed, and insisted on returning home forthwith, to our hostess's great amazement and disappointment. Divining what had occurred, I refrained from questioning her until we were outside and alone, when in reply to me she described exactly what had happened to me, using the words, "I did not want to be choked!" There were other occasions on which I was cut short under like circumstances, by having all that I meant to say suddenly and completely obliterated from my mind. Being desirous to know more of the adverse influences against which we had been warned, and from which we suffered, "Mary" consulted her illuminator respecting their origin and nature, when the following colloquy ensued:-- "They are," he said, "the powers which affect and influence Sensitives. They do not control, for they have no force.... They are Reflects. They have no real entity in themselves. They resemble mists which arise from the damp earth of low-lying lands, and which the heat of the sun disperses. Again, they are like vapours in high altitudes, upon which, if a man's shadow falls, he beholds himself as a giant. For these spirits invariably flatter and magnify a man to himself. And this is a sign whereby you may know them. They tell one that he is a king; another, that he is a Christ; another, that he is the wisest of mortals, and the like. For, being born of the fluids of the body, they are unspiritual and live _of_ the body." "Do they, then," I asked, "come from within the man?" "All things," he replied "come from within. A man's foes are they of his own household." "And how," I asked, "may we discern the Astrals from the higher spirits?"